@stripe is building the @amazon of payments. Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture 🧐
1/ Both addressing all of commerce spend, one of the largest TAMs in the world. Levered to secular ecom growth horizontally and neither take on single vertical risk.
2/ Started by focusing on SMB merchants in a targeted way and doing this 5-10x better vs incumbents.
3/ Expanded to provide a fuller suite of offerings for SMB. Amazon added fulfillment, advertising, lending. Stripe added subscription & billing management, business incorporation, merchant loans, fraud prevention.
4/ Leveraged that expertise to expand into large merchants. Amazon now sells for iconic brands like @Apple and @Nike. Stripe has customers including @zoom_us@salesforce@Wayfair@SlackHQ.
5/ Incredible flywheel at both companies. Amazon has their two-sided marketplace. Stripe’s payment business is “build once” with low marginal costs. Their scale allows them to offer the best price and invest in the fullest suite of offerings, both breadth and depth.
6/ Both were early to recognize the convergence of offline & online commerce. Amazon bought @WholeFoods for grocery, is building Go stores for cashier-free checkout. Stripe is expanding into offline commerce with Stripe Terminal. This is a mega-trend over the next decade.
7/ Both @JeffBezos & @patrickc@collision are world-class operators and masters at capital allocation. They continuously push into new markets. Amazon invested in AWS, Kindle, Echo, Twitch. Stripe is investing in offline, card issuing, corporate cards which are all massive TAMs.
1/ Thrilled to announce our investment in @GammaSwapLabs! They are building a new core primitive in the defi space – monetizing IL/vol and allowing AMM DEX trading to scale by an order of magnitude
2/ DEX AMMs have been one of the killer use cases in crypto - with 10% penetration vs spot on centralized venues, and $1Tn+ volume in both 2021/22
Unfortunately their potential is limited due to the significant amount of IL (impermanent loss) that LPs suffer
3/ Estimates put the annual IL suffered by Uniswap LPs in the ~$500M range - resulting in losses on most markout time scales, even when accounting for fees charged
This has limited the amount of liquidity that can exist and be attracted to LP in AMM dex'es
2/ Composability has been one of the super powers of defi
Highly liquid spot DEX markets (Uniswap Sushi Curve) allowed on-chain lending protocol to scale much larger - by allowing for orderly, reliable liquidations
Which further spun the on-chain trading flywheel
3/ GMX has been a real star of the Arbitrum ecosystem. $12B volumes in month of Nov alone, returning $5m in Nov fees to GMX holders (~4bp) via ETH staking yields, and $30m year to date
~$500M liquidity to trade against
Yet the composability flywheel has only just begun to spin